#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:00

Hey, I'm Pat Perdue and I want to introduce you to my latest podcast. This is a co-production between my company YCastr and Seneca College in Toronto. Seneca College is a really great school. I know because over the past couple of years, I've been teaching some marketing and business and customer experience courses there. People come to study at Seneca from all over the world, which makes it a hotbed of innovative thinking. And a big part of that thinking is driven by our amazing faculty, many of whom are well like me, professionals, who are thriving in their own businesses, and teach at Seneca as a way to share their passion for what they do. But needless to say, I've been hugely inspired by the people I've met. And what happens when I get inspired? Well, apparently, I launch a podcast. So here we are. Welcome to the Seneca Proud podcast, where I get to introduce you to some of Seneca College's amazing faculty. So subscribe, download and join me as we meet some of the super inspiring folks who teach here at Seneca College in Toronto. I'm Pat Perdue, and I'm glad you're here today.

And welcome to the Seneca proud podcast. This is episode number two. So excited. You're here with us today as we continue our conversations with some of Seneca College's faculty, thank you so much for joining us. I'm really excited to share this episode with you. My guest, Brian Bell, is professor of project management in the Seneca School of Business. But a focus of our conversation is around a new program at Seneca, that he is co-ordinator of, Business Analytics. That course kicks off in January 2019. So it might just be launching around the time you're hearing this podcast. Super interesting, a brand new program at Seneca College that's bringing leading edge big data modeling and analytics to Seneca. Brian and I also touch on the amazing impact our international students have on our community here at Seneca. And finally, we talked about Brian's recent appointment as chair of the School of leadership and human resources, which is kind of a big deal. So I asked Brian what it means to be a professor at Seneca, what sets Seneca professors apart from faculty at other colleges or universities. I thought his answer was really interesting. Okay, here's my conversation with Professor Brian Bell. Thanks so much for joining us today. 

 

Brian Bell  02:30

Entirely my pleasure to be here.

 

Pat Perdue  02:31

So I'm here with “Professor Brian Bell,” do you prefer your students to call your Professor Brian? How do you manage that?

 

Brian Bell  02:37

Well, actually, most of the time I leave it up to them because depending upon the student's background, sure, some of them are very uncomfortable called me by my first name, which I'm completely okay with. So for example, a lot of my domestic students, of course, call me Brian, but depending upon where my students are from, they may be a little bit uncomfortable with that level of informality. Okay, so then I'll get Professor Bell,

 

Pat Perdue  02:59

Okay, preference?

 

Brian Bell  03:00

Don't care. No, totally neutral,

 

Pat Perdue  03:02

Whatever, whatever they prefer!

 

Brian Bell  03:03

Whatever works.

 

Pat Perdue  03:05

Okay. So so your role is changing. When we first talked about you coming on the podcast, we were talking about the Business Analytics program, your role in that and its vision, could you share with us a little bit of that?

 

Brian Bell  03:19

Absolutely. Really exciting program, actually, Business Analytics is a new program at Seneca.  Starts in January, our first intake starts January 7, and it's a post graduate certificate program. And what that means is that our students will already have had a degree or diploma from another institution, perhaps Seneca. And then there'll be coming here for two terms to get their Graduate Certificate in Business Analytics. As I mentioned, it's a new program devised really to meet a market need. It's a very hot topic right now, with the advent, obviously significant computerization, massive amounts of data are being accumulated, and that we've all heard, you know, some of the Facebook issues about data. But it's just an indication that this data exists. And the trick is not so much acquiring it, but trying to figure out what you've got, you know, there's gold in there, but how do you find it?

 

Pat Perdue  04:12

And companies these days, it's all about data and all about intelligence for how their consumers are behaving, how their customers are behaving, even how their suppliers are behaving?

 

Brian Bell  04:22

Oh, absolutely. You know, this information can be used to really improve the efficiency and the efficacy of almost any organization. The question, as I say, A is acquiring the data. But more importantly, once you've got it, how do you analyze it? How do you find the goal that may be in there?

 

Pat Perdue  04:39

Got it. And if I'm a student considering this program, what are some key questions I might ask myself to determine whether I'm a good fit?

 

Brian Bell  04:47

Well, the first thing is that I think look at your background, and look at what you've enjoyed in the past. If for example, let's say some software programming, or you have played with statistics or you took a SAT scores and just found it really interesting. That would be a good indicator. Yeah, this might be something for you, if you'd like solving puzzles, if you're perfectly happy to, you know, lay out a whole whack of paper, or data metaphorically on a table. And I have no idea where I'm going with this image of sitting around with a with 1000 sheets of paper on the floor.  Yep. That's, that's sort of what the classroom looks like. That's how I would do it. Yeah. Obviously, not obviously, we're joking…

 

Pat Perdue  05:16

It sounds like a really exciting cutting-edge program. And it's just starting.  So what is your vision of it over the next year or two?

 

Brian Bell  05:36

Well, you know, it's interesting when you start a program, because there's really two very distinct parts to that process. One part is the internal, we need to make sure we have the right professors, we need to make sure we've got the right courses to curriculum, how are we going to teach this this course for example, this program is a hybrid program, which means that a significant percentage of it will be delivered digitally, there is still classroom stand up instruction. But a lot of it will be delivered online as well. And so the trick internally, as I say, is to try and figure out who's going to do this work, review the work, we need to see the course outlines, we need to see the course outcomes, learning objectives, and to make sure that's consistent with our vision. The second part is an external one, which is we have to tell the world that this program exists so we can get students, no students no program. So it's actually been really interesting. For me, it's my first exposure with a brand new program, that part's been particularly interesting. How do we go find people? And and get them interested in about our program?

 

Pat Perdue  06:35

And what kind of conversations are you having in order to do that?

 

Brian Bell  06:38

Well, you know, it's interesting, obviously, the first thing you do is you put a bunch of information up on your website. And it was very eye opening to me to see how many people are actually running around looking at websites, looking for programs looking for opportunities. That was intriguing. We do send out an email campaign to existing Seneca students, you know, you're about to graduate, you meet the requirements for this program, just FYI. It exists. It's here. Now, here's what it's about, here's why you might be interested in taking it.

 

Pat Perdue  07:05

Are you also liaising with or partnering with data organizations in Toronto, maybe survey companies or maybe any organization that would be involved in the collection and understanding of data?

 

Brian Bell  07:17

Great question. That's not actually my role. The professors are involved? Yes. With some external or third party organizations, they have a background in data analytics. And so a lot of them have, most of them have excellent ties into that community. So yes, there's a lot of conversations ongoing.

 

Pat Perdue  07:35

Cool. Awesome. So this is a new program. And you're not new to Seneca?

 

Brian Bell  07:40

No, no, I've been a Seneca full time and part time for seven years now. 

 

Pat Perdue  07:45

Awesome.  So, walk me through a little bit about your background, the kind of programs that you've been teaching, and share with me a little bit of the profile of the students that you've been working with.

 

Brian Bell  07:53

Okay, so I've always worked in the School of Business. And my main course load has to deal with project management. I've taught other courses as well, but really, my main responsibilities are in project management. And my students have vary quite a bit in that I've taught three year diploma students. And I've also taught four year degree students, and to be honest, graduate programs as well. So pretty significant variance in the type of students. And the interesting thing, one of the great things about teaching, and Seneca is the student body is so varied. We have students literally from all over the world, more than 100 Different countries are represented in our student body. So that has been a fascinating experience working with students literally from everywhere,

 

Pat Perdue  08:35

How does that impact how you're going to present the information?

 

Brian Bell  08:39

Well, here's just a simple example. Cultural, you come up with a cultural reference, recent movies, or given my age, maybe not so recent by my students standards. But if I come up with a movie reference from 10, or 15 years ago, that's going to fly over the head of two thirds of my audience. And that's not because they're not smart. It's just they have no idea what I'm talking about, because that's not their experience. So, you know, a very simple little example, that some of the examples that I give, really aren't going to work.

 

Pat Perdue  09:08

Getting back to your project management courses, what's something that might, and I asked this of all my guests on the podcast, something that, you know, they'll start the course, with a certain set of expectations. And they'll finish the course having said, Wow, I had no idea that we were going to cover this extra thing. How cool was that? What might be an example in your course?

 

Brian Bell  09:30

So in project management, there are some technical aspects of it that people are not familiar with, prior to taking a course like this. When we talk about leadership and working in teams and risk people understand that particularly business students who talk about budgets, they've been exposed to that concept before, some of the more technical things like figuring out a schedule, including Newton, and traditionally, I have found students particularly when I was teaching at the TDSB would start with this. Here, it's actually interesting in that the students tend to split one or two ways. Some students go the traditional route, starting with this little bit different. Other students, it is like a light bulb going off, and they completely get it. And by the way, it's not the students, sometimes you would think, but they completely get it and they run with it, and they master the software. And at the end of 14 weeks, they know something they really did not know before.   It's gratifying, actually is, is I think the best word for me, you know, somebody comes in and you're talking about something, you're showing them something and all of a sudden, literally, you can see the light go off.

 

Pat Perdue  10:36

And it's almost like they found their calling all the project managers that I've worked with, well, first of all, they run the universe. And that's supposed to be secret. And second of all, they tend to be really good at what they do as a group of people that are drawn to that profession.

 

Brian Bell  10:53

Well, I think that that's right, there is a certain calling aspect to it in some respects. And so some of my favorite stories have to deal with students who came in, they've never taken a project management course they take it, they love it. They excel at it. And before you know it, I'm getting emails from them saying, By the way, I've just passed my PMI exam, I am looking for work as a project manager.  Then you get the next email, which is to say I got work as a project manager. And it's pretty exciting.

 

Pat Perdue  11:19

How great is that? 

 

Brian Bell  11:20

Yeah, it's again, it's gratifying.

 

Pat Perdue  11:21

Is that what brings you into school every day?

 

Brian Bell  11:24

Yes, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's the sort of the pleasure of seeing somebody go from A to B, and, and hoping, thinking that you help them get there. Now for different people, that's a different amount of distance traveled. Sure. But nevertheless, there's movement. And it's really gratifying. It's rewarding to be part of that

 

Pat Perdue  11:47

Nice!  And share with us a little bit of life before Seneca, prior to our conversation, you were sharing a really interesting story about, I think, where was it with the I don't know if it was the Toronto Transit Commission or was with a Transit Commission, you're talking about some of the things that you were doing there? It was so interesting about recording the sound of the tracks. So share with us a little bit of life of life before Seneca.

 

Brian Bell  12:13

So before Seneca, I've been involved in a number of different businesses over the years, but I have my own business, which is an elearning company. So I create, we create instruction for adults in the workplace that's delivered digitally. And so the story we were talking about, was the ability to use multimedia now in teaching, which, of course, Seneca we do all the time, but one of the things we had to do was we would record track patrollers hitting a TTC subway rail with a coin. And based upon walking along the track tapping the I'd be walking along with them, and we'd be track level and they would tap the track. And then based upon the sound that the track made, when it was struck, they could tell if it was tight enough or loose enough to the bed and if it was loose, obviously it had to be tightened.

 

Pat Perdue  12:56

That's so interesting. And it's so low tech, right?  It is logical. 

 

Brian Bell  13:03

Yeah. Really neat.  But you know what, and to tie it back to Seneca tie back to teaching, we have lots of high tech. That doesn't mean low tech doesn't work. Sure. low tech, great. Sure. We do lots of things in the classroom. But sometimes it's you up at the front talking way, just the way people have been doing for the last 1500 years.

 

Pat Perdue  13:17

Yep. And that's what I find in spite of, or maybe even because of the technology because we can carefully blend it. But the human-to-human element of someone who has some life experience, and they can bring that life experience to another person who can benefit from that life experience through human to human conversation, can't beat it.

 

Brian Bell  13:37

I agree completely. There's no way to beat it. And the experience part of it is great for students because you get to tell them stories. reading from a textbook is not particularly interesting. Telling stories, particularly about things that didn't go well. Students eat that. Everybody loves a good horror story, if it's not your story. Sure. And so that I've found that's one of the benefits of having been in business for so long is I got lots of horror stories. Yeah. And so you, you can use that as a really good teaching tool.

 

Pat Perdue  14:06

And let's talk about some of the newer developments in your participation with Seneca. There's the new program, yes, Business Analytics. And there's also the HR and leadership. 

 

Brian Bell  14:20

Yes, next year, I'm actually taking over the chair position for the School of leadership and human resources. 

 

Pat Perdue  14:24

Okay.  So share with us perhaps the direction of that program, if you can, if it's not too early.

 

Brian Bell  14:28

I mean, it is early days, but here, here are my thoughts at this point. And of course, this may change over time. But, you know, you're talking about technology and the fact that there's still an HR component to that. Leadership clearly is an issue in almost all endeavors doesn't have to be an academic endeavor. It doesn't have to be a for profit corporate endeavor either. And so there are growth opportunities, I think, for this school, because what we deal with is applicable to all aspects of life.  So whether you're in a an organization that is profit, not for profit, private sector, public sector, you still need human resources, you still need warm bodies, and you would benefit from competent leadership. So to the extent that we can help to provide that, I think there's huge growth opportunities for this school.

 

Pat Perdue  15:16

Nice. Awesome. So your hand is in a lot of different pots. I'm wondering about the direction of your focus. And are your is your focus going to be in the Business Analytics? Is your focus going to be in the Human Resources Leadership?

 

Brian Bell  15:37

That's a really good question. You're right, it's easy to get very involved in lots of different things. Seneca is a big place. And there are lots of things to do. That being said, going forward, my focus is going to have to shift pretty significantly into the School of Leadership and Human Resources. Business Analytics is going great guns, we're very pleased with the way it's taking off right now. We are getting a lot of interest from students. And I will be involved with that. But over time, we'll transition that to another co-ordinator. But at the moment, I'm working with Sarah Arliss, another chair in the school. And Sarah and I will be coordinating this for the least in the next term.

 

Pat Perdue  16:12

That's great. And what would you say if you can define an ideal instructor for Seneca what makes Seneca’s professors unique and I'm sort of thinking if someone's listening to this episode, and they're debating whether or not they want to come to Seneca or a different college, what might define a Seneca professor that they might reasonably expect to, to see when they come here?

 

Brian Bell  16:34

I think it's in our name. You know, Seneca is an applied School of Arts and Science. And that part of it to me is critical. So the professor's here that I think do an excellent job are the people who have the experience to be able to apply the knowledge that they're imparting to real world situations, a lot of pure research is great, lots of institutions do that. That's not really our role. Our role is something different. We're going to teach people, provide people with tools that they can apply in real world situations. And that's true, whether you're in the business program or not. But certainly, in the big business program, we're looking for people that have the experience and the background to say, Yep, this is what theory says. And yep, this is what real life is. And yep, they may be a little bit different.

 

Pat Perdue  17:19

Staying with the business analytics, in the journey of putting together that program. Were there any surprises? Did you start out with one intent, and as you sort of got deeper into the subject matter, you thought, Oh, we really have to include this one extra thing? Because it's so cool.

 

Brian Bell  17:35

Well, you know, it's interesting, because there's actually two aspects. One part, of course, has to do, literally, with the content. And the professors have done a terrific job of working together to say, here's my content, and how does that inform your content or not? And that will answer very straightforward but important questions like in what order? Do we teach these courses? You know, if you get that wrong, that's a problem. And you can get it wrong as possible. So they've done a great job of talking to each other to see how one course informs the other. And tied to that is we realized, given that some of this content will be delivered digitally, it's a very flexible environment. So that means that we don't necessarily have to do a traditional 14 weeks and one term, start another term. So we're actually compressing some courses, some of our traditional 14 week courses, we're offering seven weeks. And because what we found is that that course actually does inform another course. And we need to complete that first. But we need to complete both courses before the second term starts. So given the flexibility of our environment, we've been able to say to the professor's, geez, you know, can we tighten this up a little bit and break the term down into different pieces? And they've been really flexible in saying, Yeah, we can do that. And, and you know, what we should?

 

Pat Perdue  18:48

Do you think this is an opportunity, specifically just for Business Analytics? Or is there a possibility that perhaps other programs might learn from this model? And be more? What was the term you used? Hybrid?

 

Brian Bell  19:02

Hybrid yes. So quick answer, absolutely huge opportunity. You know, the traditional school year has worked very well for a long time. But at the end of the day, if you take a big step back, there's really no real reason anymore to be stuck to that format. We're all used to it, of course, and I'm not suggesting we throw out the baby with the bathwater at all. But there's a lot of flexibility. We talked about technology, delivering content. Now, it can be a temporal, it can be a geographic, there, lots of opportunities, lots of different ways to solve some of the schooling problems that exist. And so absolutely, I think you're going to see more and more people look at alternative structures.

 

Pat Perdue  19:43

If I'm a student, considering business analytics, what's what are some key factors that I would want to consider career wise? That would say just that this is a program that I want to take, we talked about the mindset, if I like to be sitting on the floor surrounded by 1000s of papers, that was a joke. But what would be the, what would be the career direction I would want to be taking if I was going to take the program?

 

Brian Bell  20:20

Clearly, if you want to work in big data, if you want to work in analytics, then you need to work for a company that accumulates big data. So obviously, there's a lot of companies you will not be working for, you know, small operations, generally speaking, don't access Big Data, unless they're consulting companies that will work for other clients. But the big data world, while it's growing is really still restricted, I think, primarily to some pretty big companies that have access to that data. So at first blush, and I'm convinced that some of my professors will disagree with me. But my first blush reaction is to say you're probably looking at some pretty significant size organizations. And so that's a decision do I want to work for a big organization or not?

 

Pat Perdue  21:02

Sure. And I think even the learning trajectory of almost any company, you know, they're collecting customer consumer behavior data. They're, they're cross referencing it with publicly available data on the same individuals. So they might be able to, given some really specific expertise, behave like a big company and tap into this wellspring of this massive data, insight that they could benefit.

 

Brian Bell  21:26

I think that's a great point. And, and despite what I just said, I think your point is correct. It's actually going to go from the really large companies just like elearning did, by the way. Yes. Elearning started with really large companies, and then it is trickled down towards smaller operations. I think that's going to happen with big data as well, because you're right, there is no shortage of data out there. And it is accessible. Some of its free, some of its not, but it is accessible.

 

Pat Perdue  21:49

All right, well, Brian Bell, Professor Brian Bell, Professor Bell. Thank you, 

 

Brian Bell  21:55

Professor Pat Perdue, 

 

Pat Perdue  21:56

Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciated your time and your insights 

 

Brian Bell  22:00

Entirely my pleasure. 

 

Pat Perdue  22:03

That was my conversation with Professor Brian Bell, also co-ordinator for the brand new Seneca College Business Analytics Program, also chair of the School of Leadership and Human Resources. Lots going on with Brian. But one of my biggest takeaways from that conversation is how nice Brian is. And that was also the case in my conversation last episode with Amanda Cupido. I'm pretty sure you'll find that's the case in all of these conversations. This is the SenecaProud podcast. Thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe so that you can get all our shows on your phone or however you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, head on over to iTunes and leave us a rating and comment. It really helps people find the show. I'm Pat Perdue and until next time, stay proud Seneca.